The Decline of Science

In so many ways capitalism isn't working out the way it should on paper. One way is in the way science is now being corrupted and killed off. It's one case where the government should, and must step in. But it won't. Money making industries, including publishing, want science corrupted and dysfunctional.

http://www.cracked.com/article_22712_6-ways-modern-science-has-turned-into-giant-scam.html



Okay, I know I'm linking to a comedy website for information, but the blog right now is just off-the-cuff commentary. The problems cited there are mostly things I already noticed about the trend.  When I do some disciplined research on a topic, I'll say it.

However, I this system can't continue. Problem is what can possibly replace it? Socialism in the form of Bolshevism crashed and burned already. The Left would be politically much more active, but the brutality and eventual fall of the Soviet Union destroyed the Left's confidence. 

So capitalism continues to fester while it's adherents pretend its problems are features, or don't matter in light of the money to be made.

The End of the US

I've never given any credence to doomsday predictions, but even before Al Gore began to speak, I knew Global Warming was going to be a crisis. I used to argue with Conservatives on discussion boards about it. I wrote to one of them, "In five years you're going to agree with me."

I thought the US was going to be especially hard hit. Simply because we were the most productive agricultural country in the world. That meant that any shift in precipitation patterns would likely be unfavorable, and potable water was already precious west of the Mississippi. 

Unfortunately, it turns out I've been right, and if anything I've been too cautious. Anybody following the news knows that the whole state of California is a serious drought. It has year's worth of water left. Experts are telling us that this will now be normal for the state. This means that agriculture is basically finished in the state.

However, if this drought doesn't abate, California is suddenly not going to be able to support its population, which is now close to 40 million. Those people will have to move.

So, imagine them becoming environmental refugees. Imagine the US having to resettle half that number of people. Considering its agriculture will already a loss, imagine doing that when food is so expensive that there's famine. It's going to be the reverse of The Grapes of Wrath, with "Calis" settling in Oklahoma, perhaps once more knocking the Indians off their land. This is a catastrophe that's about to happen, for the nation and for the world.

It's not going to be the only problem. Florida, another major densely populated state has problems with sea water level rising and salinating its aquifer. Governor Rick Scott, is taking the conservative ostrich approach to problem-solving and forbidding state workers from mentioning the words Global Warming, Climate Change or sustainability.

So, the writing is on the wall that we're going to have to relocate much of Florida's population as well. That's about 28 million people.

Therefore, in the short term, we could expect much of both California and Florida's populations to become environmental refugees. I estimate that to be probably to be 25-30 million people.  Socially, we're talking an unprecedented disaster for the country. The loss of agricultural production will be terrible enough. We'll see rising food prices and famine.

Politically, it's going to create an internal power-shift as California and Florida hemorrhage population. Internationally, the US will be finished as a super-power and will fighting to keep itself from being considered a "developing" country.

The crisis that's coming would be difficult with the best of preparations. Our government, however, is not prepared in the least. What has created the problem and what will continue to exacerbate it is that we put self-centered, greedy, superstitious morons in charge of our country at every level. The most frustrating thing for me since 1980 has been standing by helpless and watching our system put the worst people in charge. That is in charge of companies, in charge of industries, and in charge of our government at all levels.

If there's one thing in my life I wish this country could do over, it would be the election of Ronald Reagan. I remember at the time I was very hopeful about it, and if he didn't turn out well, I thought we could always turn him and the rest of the conservatives out at the next election. I never thought that decision would be so indefeasible. I never thought Reagan would spawn an entire propaganda industry. I never pictured that people raised within the propaganda wall would be so badly mis-educated and spoiled. But I began to see that as early as 1985. I had two stints in college in two different decades, and my classmates were very different in each. The ones I saw in the eighties were much more fascinated with power, much more materialistic and much more anti-union. The most striking thing was they would talk about guns. I never had discussions with anyone about guns in the '70s. Nobody thought the Second Amendment was under attack.

Nothing had really changed, in fact we had a more conservative government by that time. What did change, though, is the the media environment. Conservative propaganda, and I mean on the John Birch level, was gaining a credibility it never had and didn't deserve. Meanwhile, the news industry was being gobbled up by new conglomerates.

I believe if our country hadn't elected Reagan, it wouldn't be looking doom in the face while grinning stupidly, much the way Reagan did.  Carter would have been ready to tackle, and not ignore Global Warming. The Conservatives who rose to power with Reagan would only deny and ignore the problem, because it went contrary to their religion and/or ideology.

There's more to it than that, though. Voters did not have to believe these guys. They might have just laughed off conservative propaganda. But instead, they not only elected Reagan, but they let him make them dumber. 

For that, both the US and the Conservatives are going to be treated very badly by history-- if there is any. Because with Global Warming, the extinction of humankind is a possibility.

  

Prosecuting 47 Senators?

The GOP-teaparty's latest ploy in political folly is the “open letter” to the Iranian government, warning that any treaty would only be an executive agreement between the government of Iran and the president, and Congress might alter or not abide by anything President Obama agrees to. The Senators also boast that Obama will have to leave office, whereas the senators can count on being there for decades. 

Oh, the presumptuousness! When you're supposed to stand for elections every six years, even if the public has turned out few Congressional incumbents, you shouldn't boast about your job security. Oh, their opponents for elections are going to have a field day with that hubris.

An Unsexy Gunshot to the Eye

Just wait 'til you see that mugger's face when you blow your boob off!

Woman fatally shoots herself while adjusting her bra holster.

Without a doubt, this is the worst wardrobe malfunction since Janet Jackson invented them. In fact, it sets a record.

Lost in the Vaccination Controversy

Jenny McCarthy, Playboy Model and archvillain: I'm a poser, not a doctor.

Jenny McCarthy's irrational and irresponsible dissent against vaccinations is yielding a measles epidemic. The central vector of it being Disneyland. It's in seven states already, which pretty much means it's out of control and will get much worse before it burns out.

I'm supposing Disney is not happy about this. They're probably thinking of some PSA's and probably having some lawyers look at lawsuits. Probably there will be one attempted sometime against Jenny McCarthy or others leading the anti-vaccine movement. If so, it's probably going to be groundbreaking. It'll be the first suit against someone who provided irresponsibly false information to the public. If the defendants are found liable, that will change public discourse.

Meanwhile, the anti-vaccine people are standing firm, like Gary Monahan quoted in the Los Angeles Times:

"How do I say this without sounding crazy?" he said. "I don't want anyone to get measles … but you have to make it easier for the parents through the health system to do it the right way. Pounding three live viruses into somebody at 1 year old is devastating."

Be careful any time you're tempted to begin a statement, "How do I say this without sounding crazy."

The most important issue has been buried in this debate: what's causing the upsurge in autisms? It used to be rarity, just as lung cancer used to be rare disease until cigarette smoking became ubiquitous. Now, almost everybody knows two three parents who have a diagnosed autistic child, or one with Asperger's Syndrome. I know two or three, and I'm practically a shut-in. A look at the growing prevalence is shocking:

That's a 45-fold increase in autism diagnoses in 35 years. Similar to lung cancer diagnoses after cigarettes were introduced.

Yes, some of this might be due to just having the condition better defined, but I think if autism were so common in the 1930s or 1950s, it would have been much better known, and my generation would have grown up with common knowledge about it. We'd have a colloquial name for it, just as the "the mumps" or "the chicken pox," rather then autism. Those are just indications that autism symptoms couldn't have been that common. When I grew up, I didn't know any family that had an autistic child. Children growing up now all either have an autistic sibling or know a family with it.   

In the face of this, and without any answers being offered, little apparent concern shown by the government, of course parents are becoming hysterical. Parents as group have hair-triggers when it comes to panic over their children's safety. There's all kinds of hysterias that are proof of that. So, of course they're looking for culprits. This is made worse when it's demonstrated that if one in 110 people were coming down with measles, there would be a lot of public health effort to identifying the source and containing the problem. By comparison, autism is much more devastating and costly, and the government does almost nothing. This is a public health crisis, but there's no public health effort to find the reason and remedy it.

Why isn't the government at any level giving a concerted effort to finding out what is causing this huge upsurge in autism?

This is just my guess: our generation is exposed to more exotic chemicals than any other. It's on food, in our cosmetics, in our beds, in our homes. They range from pesticides to flame-retardants, to food additives. Few of them have been studied or tested. Those that are frequently have neurotoxic or neuroactive effects. Many are known to be hormone disrupters.

It might not be any one chemical, but being exposed to the whole cocktail together must have some effect on us, and effect that's seen in the long-term, such as an upsurge in autism. Class comes into it. The wealthy class does not want to know and doesn't people to find out that products that making them  richer could be harmful. This could badly effect their bottom lines, and their goal of getting richer. It's similar to how spreading climate change denial keeps cash flow healthy and prevents a public backlash. 

I'm receptive to the idea in that I have a brother who has Angelman Syndrome, a totally tragic, crippling condition caused by a damaged maternal gene. My parents grew up within a few blocks of each other in extremely polluted St Louis City. For example, my father used to play baseball all summer on a cinder lot. This is where people dumped coal ash from their furnaces. So, he played baseball all summer long on a toxic waste dump, stirring up and inhaling ash that was loaded with lead, cadmium and arsenic. They used to chew tar off the streets, chew lead paint chips, oblivious to the fact that they were damaging themselves. I don't know exactly what my mother was exposed to, but I know St. Louis City, like all urban areas in the 1930s-1960s was in a haze of smoke and airborne industrial waste similar to what Chinese cities are experiencing. 

Even if I'm wrong on my conjecture, the question remains: why isn't the government having concerted studies into the causes of autism?

The Sony Caper

Mr. Dick Move himself makes his mark on the entertainment industry

You can usually tell when there's an event that historians will cite as turning points, such as Pearl Harbor or 9/11. Then there are some events that people at the time miss. IMHO, the Sony hack is going to be one of those turning points that weren't recognized on day one.  

Sony is now receiving criticism for pulling The Interview. That's really minor compared to the hack-damage that's been done to Sony. Whether The Interview has been pulled from distribution or not is insignificant.

Why? Because I think is Sony is out of business anyway, at least their entertainment division, which is already earthshaking. This hack has left the company a crumbling wreck, their losses are in the hundreds of millions and counting, probably as much as a half-billion dollars. That's much more significant to free speech and everything else than any bravery Sony shows now. Hackers have shown they can totally ruin a major multinational company. This is a done deal no matter what happens with The Interview. 

It looks like the GofP will have to deal with whoever gets Sony's assets in receivership. I doubt that extortionist demands are recognized as obligations by bankruptcy courts.

This attack was so thorough, I'm wondering if it's just the North Koreans who are behind it, because this is a major shot to the MPAA and their anti-Piracy policy. It's shown Hollywood that retaliations for censoring the Internet will hurt it. 

(I'm not being pro-Piracy there, I'm just against the heavy handed measures proposed in SOPA.)

Now that a major corporation has been wounded through hacking and higher ups will lose their jobs over this, it's going to send an earthquake through Hollywood, which is going to have a vast effect of entertainment. This, however, will spread through the corporate community. Online security is going to become almost ridiculous. I can see companies going "off the grid" because of this. Paper and mail will make a comeback.  There will be a federal agency or several created just to deal with Internet security and investigations.

If it can happen to a major corporation, it can happen to anyone. Independent film makers, documentary makers, are going to have to have an extra layer of brave, and an Internet security person to keep them in business. Possibly.
 
It's impossible to say in the long run how this is going to work out for free speech and creativity. Because that depends also on the response to this event.

It looks like North Korea has left its mark on pop culture.  

Why Does Racism Persist?

I'm not a sociologist or psychologist, but I'd like someone in those disciplines to look into an observation that I've made. I'm beginning to think the policing of Black neighborhoods fuels White racism against Blacks. It skews White perceptions of Black violence, and even generates felonies out of minor incidences, which are cited by Whites as evidence that Blacks are a violent menace.  

I believe the policing practices must be changed, and not only because of the egregious loss of life and abnegation of civil rights for Blacks. I think the way Black neighborhoods are policed not only oppresses and creates danger for them, but that it drives a cycle of racism.

The skewed arrests from the extreme policing create the perception that Black neighborhoods are out of control "war zones." This has an immediate effect on police that makes them crack down harder and be more aggressive. This in turn puts the Black citizens there on edge and raises the general tension level. Meanwhile, the White police--who after all--have friends and family, communicate the danger to the rest of the White community. This in turn feeds the White people's perceptions of Black violence and fuels more racism. This is reinforced by the media, who sell a perception of crime. They take police accounts of incidents exactly as the police feed it to them. As the policing, and the racist feedback fuels White racism, the following generations of police are taken from the very communities conditioned to be racist.

IMHO, the over-policing is a self-fulfilling prophecy; the police being there cracking down on crime actually make things more unsafe, and it skews the officers' own attitudes toward the people policed. 

Americans, especially White Americans, are fixated on police. Much of our news is about crime. In Pop Culture, so much of our films, TV Shows and fiction literature are about police. While it's true that some of these give a negative picture of some police, the very fact that so many of our dramas are drawn from law enforcement says something about the importance we give it. This also feeds back the message that a career in law enforcement will make a person important.

Many police at least lean conservative. Among the White police, they're drawn from the very population of segregated suburban people most affected by stories of policing Black neighborhoods. Police candidates tend to be people who see disrespect of authority as being a main problem, and not coincidentally, they themselves want to be the authority that's obeyed.

Now, think about this: in St. Charles County, a White person can go weeks without seeing one Black person. What somebody's friend or relative in law enforcement says has both authority and persistence in the rumor mill. It's precisely the stories the officers tell when they come home that condition the neighborhoods toward racism. It also matters how, in their private lives, the officers refer to the people they're policing. If they call them n*gg*rs you can bet that gets passed on. The next generation of law enforcement is informed and conditioned by these authority figures.   
The results are, in almost any discussion group over the current racial conflicts, you'll have a White commentator say, "Why doesn't the media report on Black on White crime?" (Because over 80 percent of violent crime against Whites is perpetrated by other Whites); Or "Why don't they demonstrate against Black on Black crime?" (Because they'd be petitioning for the criminal element to become democratically responsive, which is a joke, when our police are supposed to be.) They make other, more shamelessly ignorant and racist remarks. They are totally misinformed, most likely by law enforcement people talking about their work.

In the last four months, we've seen the country drawn apart due to egregious murders by White police officers of Black males. The flagship example, Darren Wilson's shooting of Michael Brown, is illustrative. It's perfectly plain that if Darren Wilson had to defend himself at the scene, he was no longer defending himself when he took the last three shots, the fatal ones, especially when the distance from Wilson's SUV is considered (148 feet, as they measure it out in this video). Most Whites do not even ask that question, do not care to hear it.

The difference of opinion between Blacks and Whites about this incident comes down to this: Whites give Darren Wilson the right to take three extra shots under the auspices of self-defense even if they're informed that he "technically" did it because he was pissed off. They do it specifically to give other police the discretion, courtesy and BOD to control the "Black Menace."  

This is true in all recent examples of police shooting unarmed, sometimes totally innocent Black males. The no indictment vote against the officers who used a lethal choke-hold against Eric Garner was egregious given that the video plainly showed Garner was at most an anticipated danger, not a real one. Like Ferguson, it was a case of police taking a misdemeanor and turning it into a fatality. But even when taken to that extreme, Whites consider that police having such extreme discretion when dealing with Blacks to be reasonable given the importance and danger. Therefore, they call it self-defense even when it plainly wasn't.

Police having broad powers to defend themselves is ironic considering law enforcement is statistically not one of the most dangerous jobs. Also, it's apparently getting safer. Statistically, there are fewer deaths and injuries for police officers than there have been since the eighties. One could never draw that conclusion from what officers say about their work in Black neighborhoods and how they must have what amounts to the power of summary execution just to stay safe.




Yet, there've been millions of recent examples on social media of Whites absolving police officers for using deadly force when the danger was questionable and definitely not dire. Even when the police officers' stories are demonstrated false by video, even when nine other witnesses contradict the officer's testimony. Yet, in almost any discussion group over the current racial matters, you'll have a White commentator say, "Why doesn't the media report on Black on White crime?" (Because over 80 percent of violent crime against Whites is perpetrated by other Whites); Or "Why don't they demonstrate against Black on Black crime?" (Because they'd be petitioning for the criminal element to become democratically responsive, when our police are supposed to be.) They'd make other, more shamelessly racist remarks.

I never thought we'd still be struggling with racism in the twenty-first century. Maybe the focus should have always been on policing rather than enforced segregation. Discrimination will always be with us, but racism doesn't have to be.